New Delhi, 15 April

The Congress on Tuesday raised concerns over the 'stagnation' in the job markets and claimed that it is now causing distress in even the most elite educational institutions in the country.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh claimed that going by available data, one-fifth of students from the prestigious IITs are not getting placements.

He said the placement data proves that the crisis is not just afflicting the informal sector and rural population but is also affecting the top institutes.

The 364th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education has noted a concerning decline in placements at several of India's top institutions, including the IITs, NITs and IIITs, besides sharing detailed data for placements at the IITs for the last few years, Ramesh said.

Citing some of the trends, he claimed that between 2021-22 and 2023-24, 22 out of 23 IITs recorded a decline in placements, and the drop was over 20 percentage points at 15 IITs.

The Congress leader also claimed that in 2021-22, 90.43 per cent of BTech students from IITs who appeared for placements were placed but in 2023-24, only 80.25 per cent of them secured jobs.

He also cited data to claim that 23 of 25 IIITs witnessed a drop in placements in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22, while 16 of them saw a decline of over 10 percentage points.

Between 2022-23 and 2023-24, Ramesh claimed, 27 of the 31 NITs recorded a fall in average salary packages offered to engineering graduates.

He said the data shows that three of these institutes saw the average package decline by over Rs 3 lakh per annum.

In the same period, the number of students placed at 31 NITs also dropped from 18,957 to 16,915, marking a decrease of 10.77 per cent, Ramesh said citing data.

'The IITs are the nation's premier institutions for engineering, with the most competitive admission processes that attract the best of faculty and students. Moreover, engineering is considered to be among the most marketable of all degrees.'

'If one-fifth of the engineers at IITs are unable to find jobs, it raises concern over how the larger population of educated youth in this country is able to secure employment. Indeed, the fact that NITs and IIITs are also seeing a decline in placements points to a large-scale stagnation in job markets,' the Congress leader said in a statement.

Similarly, Ramesh said, the fall in the average salary package secured by the engineers graduating from the NITs points to a stagnation in salaries.

'Several data points – including the government's own Periodic Labour Force Survey data -- have already indicated the same,' the Congress leader claimed.

Ramesh also said the Congress has been raising the issues of mass unemployment and wage stagnation for several years.

'The placement data proves -- once again -- that these crises are not just afflicting the informal sector and the rural population alone but are causing distress even in our most elite educational institutions,' Ramesh claimed in the statement.